It’s Juneteenth, and pioneering rapper Jeezy is midway through the seventh of 21 shows in his Legend of the Snowman residency at PH Live. Decked out in a tuxedo, he shares center stage with a cream-coated 1966 Ford Thunderbird, underneath a neon backdrop depicting a cowgirl and glowing “Casino” sign. Fifty musicians from LA’s Color of Noize orchestra flank him on both ends.
A full house—dressed to the nines—hangs on every move as the bows, reeds and horns settle to make way for a video clip of Barack Obama’s comments at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“In my first term, I sang Al Green,” Obama quipped to instant cheers. “In my second term, I’m going with Young Jeezy.”
Jeezy—now older, wiser and a godfather of hip-hop’s Atlanta-bred trap subgenre—launches into “My President” over an Obama slideshow. Smoke billows from underneath the stage, ushered upward by shimmering strings and enveloping the vehicle. Nobody needs to explicitly acknowledge the significance of the moment. They can all feel it.
“I wanted it to feel cinematic and tell a story where, even if you didn’t know the music, you would know the story,” a burgundy tracksuit-clad, black-coffee-sipping Jeezy tells the Weekly in his suite hours earlier. “It plays out like a film.”
The concert’s 29-song setlist spans three acts—“The Man,” “The Myth” and “The Legend.” More than a third of the songs came from his landmark 2005 commercial debut, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101. But the showman otherwise known as Jay Jenkins drew from every corner of his vast, 13-album catalog to curate a 90-minute mix of “anthems that have stood the test of time.”
“‘Soul Survivor’ hits different on that stage,” he notes.
Indeed. Strings flutter into a triumphant guitar solo during his Grammy-nominated Andre 3000 and Jay-Z collab “I Do.” Sinister riffs morph “Who Dat” into a metallic bop. Heavy drums bleed into a frenzied Western groove on “And Then What.” And on any given night, he’s liable to tap surprise guests like Usher, 2 Chainz, YG and Bun B.
“A lot of those records are 20 years old, and for some people, that takes them back to when they was in that space and still trying to figure their life out,” Jeezy says. “Here, you have them in this tuxedo or gown, and they’re living great. They’re doing just fine because they believed and kept going, and the music kept going with them.”
The seeds of this concept were sown last year, on the heels of a 23-city tour honoring TM:101’s 20th anniversary. In November, he enlisted a 101-member iteration of Color of Noize to join him at Planet Hollywood, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest orchestra at a hip-hop concert.
“There’s a place for greats when your music is timeless, and that’s Las Vegas,” Jeezy says. “Growing up, all the greats that I saw were out here, the Sinatras and Elton Johns. People always said things like, ‘Vegas is where artists go to die.’ It’s actually where artists go to live.”
Inspired by Ol’ Blue Eyes, Jeezy now orchestrates one of the first major hip-hop residencies on the Strip.
“From the streets to the Strip, it shows the evolution. It’s bigger than hip-hop—it’s culture,” he says. “We have things in our culture that are timeless as well, and they deserve to be in Vegas.”
He ultimately extended his initial 10-night residency to 21 dates, including Juneteenth.
“We celebrate freedom today, and I think freedom is doing what is in your heart, taking your ideas and actually executing them. Freedom is doing things that, just by history, haven’t really been done because nobody’s been free to do it,” Jeezy says before the show.
In between acts, the headliner steps aside as Ralfi Pagan’s 1971 Latin-soul ballad “To Say I Love You” punctuates a memoriam video for deceased friends like Nipsey Hussle, Pimp C and Shakir Stewart.
It’s a reminder that this stage is as much about honoring the past as it is about owning the present. And Jeezy is not ruling out another extension for a residency that’s still “forming in real time.”
“People are getting the word and showing up, and as long as they come, I’ll be here,” he says. “Vegas is my home right now, as crazy as that sounds.”
What comes next is anybody’s guess.
“I’m open to life, living, experiences and all my ideas come with that. I haven’t been in that place since I put my first album out over 20 years ago,” he adds. “Now that I’m back in that space, I’m inspired. To me, we’re trailblazing. We’ve got a clean canvas and we’re doing this our way—like Sinatra.”
JEEZY July 10 & 11, 8 p.m. (& select dates thru August 22), $175+. PH Live, ticketmaster.com.
Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!
